collin,why would you care as regards ZTE the initial customer, unless your in the assumed home markets where the devices using this MediaTek providers multi core SOC.
although it probably will be the Linux derived Android as usual,the internal Asia markets do like their Android, and you can load up any OS thats ported to it in the case of most current MediaTek SOC, so assume the same there when this 8core arrives on mass

based on Samsung's 1.6GHz freq Exynos Quad Odroid-x development board test's when it was pure ffmpeg software decoding 1080P video at full rate didn't need a fan only a passive sink.
then this MediaTek Octo core at their usual lower 1GHz freq would be even better at cooling, remember ARM cortex have more power states as standard to cycle through as standard.
although adding a low profile passive heat-sink cant hurt if your doing to do a lot of 2K software decode type processing there.

if your talking "appliance" then sure there may be enough computation/throughput there...
but this inaccurate MEME is usually put forward by mom & pop's mobile phone kids that don't read and understand how advancing spec's make their mobile and low power general purpose PC devices better, without multi core theres nowhere to go.
"the next challenge should be targeted for GPU capability as well as the memory bandwidth"
thats already covered Today as ARM inc have a real "AMBA4" Open Specifications http://www.arm.com/products/system-ip/interconnect/corelink-ccn-504-cache-coherent-network.php 1 Terabit/s bus and matching CoreLink DMC-520 Dynamic Memory Controller block's already being tested in the worlds foundries http://www.arm.com/images/CoreLink_CCN-504_system_large.png
and the memory bandwidth covered with wide I/O 2 although delayed 2 years on mass uptake while Jedec insert a slower DDR3e in its place for 2013, so everything's fine on the ARM Cortes front for some time yet if the OEM's don't slow their new products scheduled down.

sranje, i wouldn't be so sure Peter fell for anything, and its not the "Taiwanese trade media core counting..." as such, thats apples PR core initiative when implied reference to their products.
its hard to guess at this point given no real information here, but based on MediaTek's past performance and sticking to the norm (I.e a quad means 4x cores and 4 gfx) then ill start at the assumed "Big Little processor" 8x cortex A15 + 8 A7+ 8x PowerVR of some kind, (not the Mali T604 and newer) at their usual lower 1GHz freq.
OC if it as Big Little based as per mobile and not desktop/server (although they could also be looking at that new market for the longer term) then they could loose 2 or even 4 A7 there and just not count the lower cores at all in this Hex core, time will tell although hoping for the real 8core/Hex A15+ Hex NEON SIMD versions.

arm cortex will get something like 80% performance per core added just like x86.
but OC they also have the CoreLink Cache Coherent Interconnect to help them out too so more spare cycles use use http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.arm.doc.ddi0470b/index.html